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Dessert

Orange Jam

A sweet preserve made from oranges, lemons, sugar, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the fruit and extract the juice.

Make the jam

  1. In a pot, combine the juice, sugar, and grated rinds, and boil together.

  2. Melt the butter and beat it with the yolks and whole eggs.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the boiling juice, stirring constantly until it reaches a jam consistency.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, with the fruit, helps it thicken to a jam consistency.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the jam, giving it a rich, custard-like body.
Whole eggs
Add further thickening and richness to the jam base.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture and mouthfeel.
Oranges
Provide the main fruit flavour, juice and pectin-rich rinds for the jam.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the boiling juice. Eggs thicken by coagulating when heated. If the mixture is added too fast or stirred too little into very hot juice, the eggs can scramble into lumps. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the jam thickens smoothly.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, butter, egg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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